


Sollux: Cell 22

by BlameMyMuses



Series: Apotheosis [4]
Category: Fullmetal Alchemist - All Media Types, Homestuck
Genre: Body Horror, Gen, Government Experimentation, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-10
Updated: 2016-06-10
Packaged: 2018-07-14 04:12:40
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 799
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7153031
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlameMyMuses/pseuds/BlameMyMuses
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sollux screwed up, and isn't just Sollux anymore. Word to the wise? Don't play around with human transmutation.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sollux: Cell 22

Some days, there was nothing much exciting about his life. He’d sit around, stare at his four walls a bit, maybe pick at whatever food there was. Take a piss, go for a walk. The usual everyday activities.

 

Everyday. When Sollux wasn’t needed elsewhere, anyway.

 

***

 

Some days, you are strapped down, probed and stuck and cut into. One eye had seen the Truth, and they wanted to extract it, but it was so much more  _ useful  _ left in your head.

 

Some days you scream, and rage, and curse yourself.

 

Some days you cursed the Other.

 

***

 

And then he would wake up, back in his cell, and only barely remember the pain.

 

***

 

When Sollux had been thirteen, his twin brother had become ill. Unstable, some doctors had said. Infirm, said still others. Sollux had always been the steady one, but this was his  _ twin _ , his other half, the other side of his soul.

 

He went a little bit mad, himself.

 

***

 

It wasn’t such a foreign concept, at its core. A brother should help a brother. A friend should lend a hand.

 

But not like this. The Other had—you wouldn’t call him by name, no, not ever again—had done it  _ wrong _ . 

 

Done  _ you both  _ wrong.

 

You hate him. And in so doing, hate yourself.

 

***

 

They were twins. They were never supposed to be two people, anyway, but sometimes accidents happen, and they had split on their way into the world.

 

Sollux had this idea—mad and genius, a way to hack  _ life _ —that if he could just…put them together again…he could fix his dear twin. In so doing, just maybe, he could also fix himself.

 

***

 

It hadn’t worked, of course. And now they have you stripped bare, in places down to the bones, just trying to see what makes you run.

 

***

 

Bees, though Sollux, somehow unsurprised. The doors of the Gate had opened, and showed him things—secrets, knowledge, codes that made the universe run, a great honeycomb network of universes all leading into one another, and the Truth was so far beyond him that he couldn’t keep it in his mind long enough, just that tiny glimmer of it behind the left eye, and then there was the price.

 

There had been a flaw in his array.

 

The swarm had come in, and taken his twin away, had given him what he hadn’t meant to hope for.

 

He’d doomed them both.

 

***

 

You are not a “both” anymore.

 

You are a “one.”

 

***

 

Sollux Captor. The experiment in cell 22, buried beneath the abandoned shell of Laboratory 5. They called him by a number, not a name, and he hated the number because it didn’t have a single 2 in it anywhere.

 

His file contained words like “failed human transmutation” and “unique outcome” and other soundbites that didn’t come close to explaining what he’d done.

 

He had tried to save his twin, tried to provide a stable uplink, to help share the neural load with his brother, to help stabilize and steady.

 

Instead, he’d ruined them. He’d tied his twin to himself, alright, and had shorted out his brother completely.

 

***

 

The body hadn’t made it. Sometimes— _ sometimes _ —you’re still here and sane.

 

Sane and mad. Absolutely frothing mad.

 

And the alchemy in your brother’s hands goes wild and dangerous, and you laugh, because maybe you’ll finally manage to kill yourselves this time.

 

You’re never allowed to let it go that far. They always tranquilize you first.

 

***

 

So now Sollux lives in a six-by-six cell, too dangerous to share the space. He already shares the space with the raging madness in the other side of his head.

 

This is what happens to those who break the Taboo and are caught. Or at least, those who aren’t able to hide the ugliness the Truth can show.

 

Fifth Lab is filled with mistakes like him, or worse.

 

The girl in the cell next to his is a chimera, with tentacles for hair and who  _ glubs _ when she cries. Across from him there is soul trapped in an automail doll, who somehow manages to make him laugh even on his bad days, and who he calls “AA” because she won’t tell him her real name. There’s a young man a few cells further who makes anyone who comes near break out in a cold sweat of fear, but who smiles and calls even the scientists and alchemists who cut into him “best friend.” They’re idiots, to not hear the deathwish in it.

 

***

 

It’s all freaks and fuck-ups down here, and you’re so damn glad that one day you’ll tear this place to the fucking ground; burn it to ash while you’re still inside.

 

***

 

On his bad days…

 

…well, they’re all bad days…

 

On his bad days, Sollux wishes his brother just  _ would _ .


End file.
